I own a Gamecube, and I've found the third-party controllers to be pretty crappy and unreliable compared to the official Nintendo brand controllers.

That said, I own one memory card (3rd party), which after 6 months of using is giving me problems - apparently the memory card is always corrupted, so I have to constantly format the card and lose my saved info.

Are 3rd party memory cards as reliable as the Nintendo brand ones? I'm willing to pay the extra $10 more for a Nintendo brand memory card if it is noticably better.

I'd stick with the Nintendo 251 card. It's big enough for most stuff that you'll need and it works well for me.

In order of preference, I'd have to go Wavebird -> Nintendo Controller - > 3rd party. I own two of each of these, and while the 3rd party stuff hasn't broken, at least one of my third party extension cords causes the GC to stop working when it's plugged in.

I just bought a Nintendo 251 today at Walmart, the cheapest place I could find. I don't trust some eBay sellers, since I've heard stories of people advertising 1st party accessories but sending 3rd party. Sometimes it's best to just buy brand new.